I have tried to do a new install of WIN XP on a laptop and silly me chose the upgrade option instead..... so it did most of that then started rebooting all the time... so then (in my wisdom) i tried a new installation - during the setup when it asks you what partitition to install on this laptop says UNKNOWN DRIVE - there is no disk in this drive. it repeats 4 times.
Can anyone please please please help me.
I also tried the ASR option and on c: chkdsk - it comes up with - The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems.
Suggest that you post brand and model of the laptop. I also suggest that you run the manufacturer's diagnostic on the hard drive. Those are available in Shinma's Various Downloads sticky in the General Forum here. You do not need to be able to boot into Windows to run them, as they boot from a floppy. It may be that you need to zero-fill your drive if there is not a physical problem with it.
Thank you! and thanks for your very fast reply!!!! -
Its my friends laptop and its brand is ITC - it weighs an absolute tonne!
I believe she had it custom built or thats what they told her
its a p4 3.2ghz 1 gig ram, this laptop doesnt have a floppy drive either which makes things difficult.
I believe it will be still under warranty but the guy she got it from is 3000 kilometres away.
As jimbo1763 said start with hard drive diagnostics, if you dont know how state the model of the hard drive you have. It should be visible on the boot up or in the BIOS. The long number which stands for the name of the hard drive will do just fine.
You ought to be able to put those diagnostic programs on a CD and go from there. Be sure that your BIOS is set to detect the optical drive as the first boot device.
And speaking of the BIOS, does it recognize the hard drive?
You ought to be able to put those diagnostic programs on a CD and go from there. Be sure that your BIOS is set to detect the optical drive as the first boot device.
And speaking of the BIOS, does it recognize the hard drive?
Sounds to me like it could be a hard drive problem. I also recommend the Ultimate Boot CD. I had issues with it on an older laptop on the utilities that required a dos boot. Because the man who created it went to great effort to use only free code, he used FreeDos instead of MS DOS. A few programs on the disk that used FreeDos would not run for me. All those with a linux boot ran fine.
Ehm, wouldnt be by far the easiest solution if he would answer what the disk in his lappy is so we could show him the link to the original manufacturers diagnostic utility.
BTW that utility is also needed to RMA the disk in case if it is faulty and you dont want to send the whole lappy.
Ehm, wouldnt be by far the easiest solution if he would answer what the disk in his lappy is so we could show him the link to the original manufacturers diagnostic utility.
BTW that utility is also needed to RMA the disk in case if it is faulty and you dont want to send the whole lappy.
Wathever hard-drive manufacturer utility he requires is on the ultimate boot cd. So, he will be equipped with all software he needs to diagnose his problem.
Nice program! I made myself a Windows 98 "Floppy" BootCD a while back. It works great, and allows you to boot to DOS without a floppy drive. I actually just found it the other day, and it has saved me in the past. The above ultimatebootCD looks even better!
Give what you cannot keep to gain what you cannot lose.
Wathever hard-drive manufacturer utility he requires is on the ultimate boot cd. So, he will be equipped with all software he needs to diagnose his problem.
ultimate stuff then, does it have the answer to the ultimate question as well, couse I just might dl it then
Seriously, if it has original manufacturers utlities, then you are OK, you should be able to get the error code as well, which you will need for RMA, in case you need to do one.
UBCD is really something. After a friend with broadband downloaded and burned it, I have booted from it to see if it functions. Amazing. Lots and lots of tools.
It does have all the Manufacturers Hard Drive Utilities!
Last edited by Leoslocks; November 4th, 2005 at 01:43 AM.
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Originally Posted by jimbo1763
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